- Dec 5, 2020
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- Thread starter 7767
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Yes, there are planned updates. It's still in development.
- Aug 31, 2020
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I don't believe I'm alone in saying this, but I think that world navigation in most static 3D adult games is poor in most regards. There are many adult games that allow you to explore an area through point and click navigation, however its very difficult to understand where exactly you are within the map.
I think this is in part due to the first person perspective adopted during the exploration phase, as well as trying to implement features from classic 2D point-and-click adventure games with only half success.
This isn't an attempt to send hate on any developer, not by any means. It's more of an observation of a common trend I see within adult games that utilize 3D pre-rendered backgrounds and allow you to explore these areas, to be specific.
Navigation is either done by clicking on doors/entryways to transition from room to room, and or using on-screen clickable arrows to move your character to another set-piece within an area. This doesn't sound like a problem on the surface, however you have to take into consideration that the transition between these areas is more often than not a simple fade/abrupt transition. Its not that much different from going 120mph down an interstate, closing your eyes for a couple of seconds, and suddenly finding yourself in a ditch with your front bumper laying in the middle of the interstate 300+ feet behind you with no idea of what happened.
I think part of this is amplified by the complexity of the 3D environment. For simple areas with minimal exploration and easily identifiable landmarks, such as the fish market that was screenshotted in the previous example, its not difficult to understand how you got from Point A to Point B. You're suddenly closer to the fish market than you were before, so its not difficult to understand where you are and how you got there.
It also helps that the market plaza is wide and quite open with buildings being distinct from one another. Within buildings, corridors, hallways, and small rooms though, especially those that allow you to "look" around utilizing arrows as means of navigation, it can become quite easy to get lost. Often you will have to continually click different arrows to find some sort of means of figuring out where you are and how to proceed or go back the way you came. This issue becomes much more pronounced in games where models and environments within the rendered world are reused or look quite similar.
Here's an egregious example of this in Being A DIK:
For those who have played the game, you might recognize this as one of the hallways within the fraternity. If you hover near the bottom of the screen, there is a clickable black arrow that appears(which unfortunately blends into backgrounds too often). Selecting that arrow essentially turns/moves your characters perspective and results in you now looking at this:
I don't know about everybody else, but there are 3 different white doors all within close proximity of one another, and I have no idea what room I'm about to attempt to enter until I interact with it. Which, well -- isn't inherently bad, but it goes from exploring an environment to a guessing game. Instead of exploring, you are trying to wrangle the games mode of exploration. I would expect that pressing the arrow would take my character to where I was before, but that is not what happens.
This is just one example of this that still frustrates me to this day, and there are many more from both Being A DIK as well as many other games. Take the most recent free-roam added in the latest episode of Being A DIK. Without the new map feature to allow for easier exploration, navigating the environment would be an absolute nightmare.
For my next point, I think having a map or some form of room navigator is OKAY. At least, sort of. I partly believe its a crutch to compensate for the tedious ways of having to navigate these 3D environments. However, if you allow the player to do this in every explorable scenario, at least during their first encounter, it removes some of the discovery from the game and goes from a world to explore to an area to do chores within. I don't have a solution to this, as my stance is already a bit negative, but I think allowing it for areas that you have already explored or visited would be okay. Its not too different from fast traveling within Dark Souls, where the areas connecting these large environments often offer nothing new to player's gameplay after initially clearing them.
Ultimately, I do think a large problem with this overall sense of disorientation when trying to navigate through the game environment is partly due to the first person perspective being combined with the point and click style gameplay, rapid transitions, and the navigation arrows often only giving a vague indicator of which direction you are going to go.
Some games will opt out of this arrow navigation method and instead decide on menu or text based navigation, very akin to visual novels. Once in a Lifetime makes use of this method a few times and I think it pans out well. As long as the areas match the descriptor, it's not difficult to find out where you are and where you need to go.
However, you are opting for navigation via menus or choice boxes as opposed to interacting based strictly on what you see in the environment. So, some immersiveness may be stripped in the process.
There are also games that opt for non-intrusive buttons that blend in with the UI, or set objects within the gameworld to be used as navigation(such as a simple, but effective, signpost). Komisari has one of these pointing towards the park within the Marketplace. Also, as opposed to the area I referenced within Being A DIK, Komisari has a similar area within the Rooms area in the Guild. However, the arrow near the bottom of the screen does exactly what you would expect it to, take you back to where you were previously. It doesnt suddenly face plant you into a white door taking up your entire screen.
Again, these are just some things I've personally noticed within many 3D adult games that allow you to explore around in pre-rendered environments. Some games handle this sandbox style element okay, others not so much.
This is all in reference to the discussion of accessibility within game navigation that was previously discussed.
I think this is in part due to the first person perspective adopted during the exploration phase, as well as trying to implement features from classic 2D point-and-click adventure games with only half success.
This isn't an attempt to send hate on any developer, not by any means. It's more of an observation of a common trend I see within adult games that utilize 3D pre-rendered backgrounds and allow you to explore these areas, to be specific.
Navigation is either done by clicking on doors/entryways to transition from room to room, and or using on-screen clickable arrows to move your character to another set-piece within an area. This doesn't sound like a problem on the surface, however you have to take into consideration that the transition between these areas is more often than not a simple fade/abrupt transition. Its not that much different from going 120mph down an interstate, closing your eyes for a couple of seconds, and suddenly finding yourself in a ditch with your front bumper laying in the middle of the interstate 300+ feet behind you with no idea of what happened.
I think part of this is amplified by the complexity of the 3D environment. For simple areas with minimal exploration and easily identifiable landmarks, such as the fish market that was screenshotted in the previous example, its not difficult to understand how you got from Point A to Point B. You're suddenly closer to the fish market than you were before, so its not difficult to understand where you are and how you got there.
It also helps that the market plaza is wide and quite open with buildings being distinct from one another. Within buildings, corridors, hallways, and small rooms though, especially those that allow you to "look" around utilizing arrows as means of navigation, it can become quite easy to get lost. Often you will have to continually click different arrows to find some sort of means of figuring out where you are and how to proceed or go back the way you came. This issue becomes much more pronounced in games where models and environments within the rendered world are reused or look quite similar.
Here's an egregious example of this in Being A DIK:
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For those who have played the game, you might recognize this as one of the hallways within the fraternity. If you hover near the bottom of the screen, there is a clickable black arrow that appears(which unfortunately blends into backgrounds too often). Selecting that arrow essentially turns/moves your characters perspective and results in you now looking at this:
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Log in or register now.
I don't know about everybody else, but there are 3 different white doors all within close proximity of one another, and I have no idea what room I'm about to attempt to enter until I interact with it. Which, well -- isn't inherently bad, but it goes from exploring an environment to a guessing game. Instead of exploring, you are trying to wrangle the games mode of exploration. I would expect that pressing the arrow would take my character to where I was before, but that is not what happens.
This is just one example of this that still frustrates me to this day, and there are many more from both Being A DIK as well as many other games. Take the most recent free-roam added in the latest episode of Being A DIK. Without the new map feature to allow for easier exploration, navigating the environment would be an absolute nightmare.
For my next point, I think having a map or some form of room navigator is OKAY. At least, sort of. I partly believe its a crutch to compensate for the tedious ways of having to navigate these 3D environments. However, if you allow the player to do this in every explorable scenario, at least during their first encounter, it removes some of the discovery from the game and goes from a world to explore to an area to do chores within. I don't have a solution to this, as my stance is already a bit negative, but I think allowing it for areas that you have already explored or visited would be okay. Its not too different from fast traveling within Dark Souls, where the areas connecting these large environments often offer nothing new to player's gameplay after initially clearing them.
Ultimately, I do think a large problem with this overall sense of disorientation when trying to navigate through the game environment is partly due to the first person perspective being combined with the point and click style gameplay, rapid transitions, and the navigation arrows often only giving a vague indicator of which direction you are going to go.
Some games will opt out of this arrow navigation method and instead decide on menu or text based navigation, very akin to visual novels. Once in a Lifetime makes use of this method a few times and I think it pans out well. As long as the areas match the descriptor, it's not difficult to find out where you are and where you need to go.
However, you are opting for navigation via menus or choice boxes as opposed to interacting based strictly on what you see in the environment. So, some immersiveness may be stripped in the process.
There are also games that opt for non-intrusive buttons that blend in with the UI, or set objects within the gameworld to be used as navigation(such as a simple, but effective, signpost). Komisari has one of these pointing towards the park within the Marketplace. Also, as opposed to the area I referenced within Being A DIK, Komisari has a similar area within the Rooms area in the Guild. However, the arrow near the bottom of the screen does exactly what you would expect it to, take you back to where you were previously. It doesnt suddenly face plant you into a white door taking up your entire screen.
Again, these are just some things I've personally noticed within many 3D adult games that allow you to explore around in pre-rendered environments. Some games handle this sandbox style element okay, others not so much.
This is all in reference to the discussion of accessibility within game navigation that was previously discussed.
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- Dec 1, 2019
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I do think this is too broad a topic for a specific game forum. However, I do not share your observations at all (except for "text boxes" instead of environmental clicks taking out some of the immersion). Yes, it may take some getting used to, as does any navigation in the beginning, you still need to know where you are and where you want to go within a largely unknown environment. But I find neither the "no transition effect" nor anything else to lead to disorientation or similar. Questions like "three identical white doors" notwithstanding, which I think are a different issue.
That does not mean that a "list of every room available in the building" as a shortcut would necessarily be bad, but maneuvering through houses or towns does not pose a real problem to me.
- Nov 24, 2019
- 283
- 260
Given I get lost doing navigation even IRL, I think I should refrain from the discussion and just watch you both discussing 
...I mean, it should be obvious already that navigation capabilities are not something universal. To quote a scientific journal,
1- Identify landmarks
2- ...Remember these landmarks
3- Remember where they are, and what is on the cardinal directions
4- ...Obviously, be able to track the cardinal directions
5- Be able to remember/decide which direction they must go to find what they're looking for.
These are not a given; And people do not navigate in the same way as others. Some will navigate almost solely based on landmarks (three white doors = navigation impossible), some will do so almost solely on cardinal directions (so if the camera "rotates" they become immediately lost, even if e.g. the doors were colored red, white and blue). Meanwhile, all this is relying on being able to pick certain elements on the screen, deciding they are important correctly, remembering their position and...
As I said. It should already be obvious that there is no universally working solution. There's reasons why some people are better at maze navigation than others and such, as well.
In my opinion, minimaps might be most universal accessibility solution regarding this. Even if you lose your sense of direction, the minimap still allows you to at very least locate yourself. If minimap and game have a fixed north, you can also recover the sense of direction without the need of trial and error.
But this is no good for a Visual Novel. In a visual novel, what is being displayed is more important than where you are supposed to be. Navigation is more of a side feature. You may be forced to rotate the char at times to display something more important, and this will mess up the navigation for some - but not all - people. Your choice of landmarks may also differ from what others will select - again, messed up navigation for some people. Not to mention those with bad memory (hi!) whom will likely forget the landmarks altogether and at first rotation will no longer remember where they came from.
So no, you cannot realistically make a 2D VN with an immersive navigation without some people getting lost. Even if it is 3D, some people may still get lost if they already have difficulties IRL with navigation. Navigation is difficult, ingame and IRL. You cannot make a way which no one will get lost without sacrificing something else.
...All of these relying on the user being able to associate correctly what, where, and how to. At which point the suggestion of coloring the direction pointers make much more sense. (hint: typically difficult to implement)
So, uh, don't think too much.
You won't have an universally perfect navigation system.
Instead focus on making one which work, and polish it gradually as you get reports.
Which is what you are doing already. So keep up the good work?
And try to keep consistent, as much as possible, so even people like me whom have difficulty navigating can eventually make sense out of it without having to resort to walkthroughs and such.
I admit having gotten lost on the market first time around and taking a couple ingame days to make sense of it. But I don't recall issues anywhere else. The market is build like a circle with stuff on the tangents, which takes longer to get used it. (Specially because it has buildings which "block" your vision on the tangents. Finding the park was like finding a secret area for me :3)
Right now I could navigate on it without problems - I got used to it, but anyone with navigation skills similar or worse than mine will have issues (and need to take a while learning - usually 10-15 minutes do the trick)
...I mean, it should be obvious already that navigation capabilities are not something universal. To quote a scientific journal,
To properly navigate (in a game, at least), a person must be capable to at very least
1- Identify landmarks
2- ...Remember these landmarks
3- Remember where they are, and what is on the cardinal directions
4- ...Obviously, be able to track the cardinal directions
5- Be able to remember/decide which direction they must go to find what they're looking for.
These are not a given; And people do not navigate in the same way as others. Some will navigate almost solely based on landmarks (three white doors = navigation impossible), some will do so almost solely on cardinal directions (so if the camera "rotates" they become immediately lost, even if e.g. the doors were colored red, white and blue). Meanwhile, all this is relying on being able to pick certain elements on the screen, deciding they are important correctly, remembering their position and...
As I said. It should already be obvious that there is no universally working solution. There's reasons why some people are better at maze navigation than others and such, as well.
In my opinion, minimaps might be most universal accessibility solution regarding this. Even if you lose your sense of direction, the minimap still allows you to at very least locate yourself. If minimap and game have a fixed north, you can also recover the sense of direction without the need of trial and error.
But this is no good for a Visual Novel. In a visual novel, what is being displayed is more important than where you are supposed to be. Navigation is more of a side feature. You may be forced to rotate the char at times to display something more important, and this will mess up the navigation for some - but not all - people. Your choice of landmarks may also differ from what others will select - again, messed up navigation for some people. Not to mention those with bad memory (hi!) whom will likely forget the landmarks altogether and at first rotation will no longer remember where they came from.
So no, you cannot realistically make a 2D VN with an immersive navigation without some people getting lost. Even if it is 3D, some people may still get lost if they already have difficulties IRL with navigation. Navigation is difficult, ingame and IRL. You cannot make a way which no one will get lost without sacrificing something else.
...All of these relying on the user being able to associate correctly what, where, and how to. At which point the suggestion of coloring the direction pointers make much more sense. (hint: typically difficult to implement)
So, uh, don't think too much.
You won't have an universally perfect navigation system.
Instead focus on making one which work, and polish it gradually as you get reports.
Which is what you are doing already. So keep up the good work?
And try to keep consistent, as much as possible, so even people like me whom have difficulty navigating can eventually make sense out of it without having to resort to walkthroughs and such.
I admit having gotten lost on the market first time around and taking a couple ingame days to make sense of it. But I don't recall issues anywhere else. The market is build like a circle with stuff on the tangents, which takes longer to get used it. (Specially because it has buildings which "block" your vision on the tangents. Finding the park was like finding a secret area for me :3)
Right now I could navigate on it without problems - I got used to it, but anyone with navigation skills similar or worse than mine will have issues (and need to take a while learning - usually 10-15 minutes do the trick)
- Aug 31, 2020
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This was mostly in regards to a player struggling with navigation within the game, to the point they were not able to continue playing because they were stuck. Someone else had mentioned that this doesn't seem like an issue, however it's simply a small portion of widespread issues that are common within sandbox adult games that allow for point and click exploration. Again, this is merely a discussion of accessibility, though I can understand why this may seem a bit broader of a topic -- something that goes beyond Hero's Harem Guild.
For me, a chord was struck when I saw Komisari's response, as well as seeing the player having issue with navigating the game world. Hero's Harem Guild isn't a bad adult game, not by any means. I saw an opportunity to bring forth something that more developers should be discussing and I won't hesitate to do so again.
I'd also like to make it clear that the "three identical white doors" isn't just an issue of gameplay clarity, but also that, pressing the navigation arrow hovering at the bottom of the screen puts your camera dead-center on another white door. You can't know whether or not its simply one of the two doors you were looking at, or what in actuality is another door that is slightly hidden from view. Its very vague, and having it absorb your entire viewport makes it difficult to understand where your character is within their surroundings. This issue is not a completely different matter by any means.
I'd also like to reference how a similar situation appears within Hero's Harem Guild, however Komisari handled this instance properly. Instead, the bottom arrow hovering at the bottom of the screen instead takes you back to where you were before. It makes navigational gameplay much more intuitive and understandable. There isn't very much guessing involved, at least in that specific comparison anyways.
I hope that clarifies any points of confusion. Thank you for engaging in the discussion though.
Ultimately, not everyone will struggle or have issues with these elements of gameplay, and I myself have gotten used to this form with enough time, however there are many players that do. I don't believe that a developer should sacrifice their creative vision to appeal to a different audience, but I also don't believe that a developer should make gameplay decisions to exclude an audience of eager, but disadvantaged players. It's the same reason that I agree most games should offer tweakable difficulty settings, subtitles, color-blind options, skippable combat scenarios, and QTE's that players can opt out of.
I had issues with that as well, click on the heart, and in the filter field type in a period (.), and then the cheat you want. I got them working from a fresh install within the past week.
- Dec 5, 2020
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or just you know... use the guild board? can get plenty of items to sell (blue flower things are where its at) and can just read a book, watch a movie etc and click collect every few minutes
- Dec 1, 2019
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- Mar 19, 2021
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i literally spent 10k for this but it was definitely worth it. Hero's Harem Guild? No. Its Holy Headpatt Game
- Dec 1, 2019
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Most important unlock in the game. Yes, expensive, but so worth it!
- Mar 4, 2018
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- Aug 1, 2018
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- Nov 11, 2020
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I came across this game a while ago, but only just recently made the time to play. So far, a pretty solid game, if you overlook the grammar problems.
The only problem I have is with the Tom Jones flashbacks whenever I talk to a certain new shopkeeper. . .
Eric Grey
The only problem I have is with the Tom Jones flashbacks whenever I talk to a certain new shopkeeper. . .
Eric Grey
- Jul 21, 2017
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- May 27, 2020
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The dev said its not and that he's working on it alone
Its been almost a year since the last update so I really don't know when the next one will take place
He said it will be soon exactly 2 months ago
Best thing is to do is to come back like once a month to check on it due to how rare updates are for this game (I mean, it is only 1 developer)
But as mentioned; the next updated should more than double the current game's content
Just a bummer to wait for a year..